The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process
(OPAPP) on Tuesday said the Government of the Philippines (GPH) peace panel
conducted and participated in 553 consultations among the various stakeholders
of the Bangsamoro peace process from 2010 up until the completion of the
Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) and the drafting of the
proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
“[This number] covers only the consultations conducted by
the peace panel in Mindanao up to early 2015.
It does not cover the number of consultations carried out by other
officials/units of OPAPP, nor the number of consultations carried out by
Congress, through its respective chamber committees, especially the House Ad
Hoc Committee on the BBL, not just in Mindanao but all over the Philippines,”
OPAPP Secretary Teresita Quintos Deles stated in a Facebook post.
“The fact is that the draft BBL has broken all congressional
records in the number of consultations carried out on a legislative bill,” she
added. “The fact is that certain Senators never paid it a bit of attention
until the tragedy of Mamasapano gave them a platform to grandstand on the pain
of its victims.”
Out of these 553 consultation activities, the peace panel
met 10 times with representatives and supporters of the Moro National
Liberation Front (MNLF), six times with members and representatives of the
Sultanates in Mindanao , 32 times with
representatives and groups of indigenous peoples (IPs), and 100 times with
leaders and officials of local government units (LGUs).
From all of these engagements and interactions with the
different stakeholders, the peace panel took into consideration their
positions, insights and suggestions as inputs to the peace negotiations, the
signed Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro in 2012, and the CAB which served
as the basis for the BBL. Parallel to these, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
and the Bangsamoro Transition Commission were also reported to have conducted
their own consultations.
GPH peace panel chair Professor Miriam Coronel–Ferrer also
stressed that these extensive and meaningful consultations were significant
enough to ensure that the draft BBL submitted to Congress was made more
inclusive and more substantive as a legislative document.
“Even before the peace negotiations resumed in 2010, it has
always been our practice and mandate to include all possible constituency and
stakeholders in the table because the product of this peace process will
determine, not ours, but their future and the fate of the Bangsamoro,” Ferrer
said. “At the same time, we also had consultations and briefings with the
members from both chambers of Congress to guarantee that the BBL would be
constitutionally firm and transparent.”
In a position paper dated May 18, 2015, which was submitted
to the Senate, the GPH peace panel noted that the House Ad Hoc Committee on the
BBL held 51 public hearings and consultations while the Senate Committee on
Local Government, chaired by Senator Ferdinand Marcos, conducted only 12 public
hearings and one briefing.
During the Vice-Presidential Debate held at University of
Santo Tomas (UST) last Sunday, Senator Marcos claimed that the government peace
panel did not conduct wide-based consultations for the Bangsamoro peace process
in Mindanao . “Ang kinausap lang ng gobyerno ay
ang MILF. Hindi ang mga kababaihan, LGUs, at MNLF. Dapat lahat ng sektor ay
kasama. (The government only spoke with the MILF. Not with the women, LGUs, and
MNLF. All sectors should be included),” Marcos claimed.
Deles, however, stressed that the government made sure that
the peace process was kept open and transparent to all stakeholders.
“Not many people were very interested in the peace process
then, but those who have always been closely monitoring its progress would
recall that we always have media sessions after the talks to update the public
on the state of the process,” she said.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=875664
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